Cooking Data : Culture and Politics in an African Research World / Crystal Biruk.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography | Book collections on Project MUSEPublisher: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018Manufacturer: Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2019Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (296 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780822371823
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Online resources:
Contents:
The office in the field: building survey infrastructures -- Living project to project: brokering local knowledge in the field -- Clean data, messy gifts: soap-for-information transactions in the field -- Materializing clean data in the field -- When numbers travel: the politics of making evidence-based policy -- Conclusion: Anthropology in and of (critical) global health.
Summary: "In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data is never clean; rather, it is always 'cooked' during its production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce it. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information--such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers--acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise."-- Provided by publisher
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The office in the field: building survey infrastructures -- Living project to project: brokering local knowledge in the field -- Clean data, messy gifts: soap-for-information transactions in the field -- Materializing clean data in the field -- When numbers travel: the politics of making evidence-based policy -- Conclusion: Anthropology in and of (critical) global health.

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"In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data is never clean; rather, it is always 'cooked' during its production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce it. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information--such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers--acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise."-- Provided by publisher

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